NEW YORK — Elwood Edwards, a behind-the-scenes graphics and camera operator at local Cleveland television station WKYC whose voice was propelled to worldwide fame after he recorded AOL’s email greeting, ‘You’ve Got Mail,’ has died, according to his former employer. He was 74.
WKYC said he passed following an undisclosed “long illness.”
Any former AOL user can recognize his voice. More than 30 years ago, Edwards recorded four iconic lines for what was then a little-known company called America Online.
His wife, Karen, worked at Quantum Computer Services, which eventually became AOL, Edwards said in an AOL YouTube video in 2012. In 1989, she overheard former CEO of America Online, Steve Case, discussing adding a voice to the upcoming AOL software.
She volunteered her husband, and Edwards recorded the phrases on a cassette deck in his living room. Those four phrases – “Welcome,” “You’ve Got Mail,” “Files done,” and “Goodbye” – would eventually be heard by hundreds of millions of people and become a staple part of the AOL experience. AOL and CNN had shared common ownership for about 15 years but are no longer related.
“I had no idea it would become what it did, I don’t think anybody did,” Edwards said in a 2019 interview on podcast “Silent Giants with Corey Cambridge.” “Suddenly, AOL took off… I remember standing in line at CompUSA and seeing (stacks of AOL CDs) and thinking, ‘my voice is on every one of those, and nobody has a clue.’”
For years, Edwards worked at Cleveland, Ohio television station WKYC, where the station said he was a jack-of-all-trades from camera operator to graphics.
Frank Macek, senior broadcast director at WKYC, was friends with Edwards for 15 of the 30 years he’s been at the station. He said Edwards was generous with his knowledge in the broadcast business, willing to walk his colleagues through new systems.
“Every time someone would come to visit at WKYC, he’d introduce himself and they’d recognize him,” Macek said. “There was such an association between his voice and AOL for such a long period of time that he became an instant celebrity as a result.”
Edwards even appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” where he also pronounced different phrases from audience suggestions.
Edwards was born in New Bern, North Carolina, and graduated from high school in the Tar Heel state, he said in an interview on podcast “Silent Giants with Corey Cambridge.”
He began working in radio in high school, and then pivoted to become a booth announcer in television and hosted a radio show.
“I didn’t enjoy being on camera as much as I enjoyed being behind the scenes,” Edwards said on the podcast.
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