Back in 1999, when you logged on to AOL and, well, had mail, you’d hear the dulcet tones of an unnamed guy chime, “You’ve got mail!” If you log in today, you’ll still hear it. (I just logged into an AOL account I abandoned as a teen to confirm this.)
That voice comes from one Elwood Edwards, who booked the job back in 1989 (nearly ten years before Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks would star in a rom-com based entirely around the now-iconic phrase). Edwards, a broadcast announcer by trade, landed the gig because his wife volunteered him. “My wife was a customer service rep for the company that was about to become America Online,” Edwards told Great Big Story. “She heard Steve Case talking to some of the programmers [about] how fun it would be to add a voice to the software.”
Over the weekend, Edwards popped back up online again. This time on Twitter, after a passenger, Brandee Barker, in the Uber he was driving realized she was riding with one of the world’s most famed voices and filmed him saying “you’ve got mail” from the driver’s seat. Edwards, for his part, seemed to be a really good sport about the whole thing.
Can’t wait to see which tech giant Edwards works for next.
