Growing up in North Carolina, Edwards started working in radio before even graduating from high school. A few years later he moved to TV, first as a weatherman, but that only lasted a few weeks: he quickly decided he preferred to be in the background, doing graphics work, editing, and — especially — announcements and commercials. “My voice has always been my greatest asset,” he said. He moved around to several stations, but mostly worked at WKYC, an NBC affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio.
In 1989, Edwards’ wife, Karen, worked for Quantum Link (mostly known as Q-Link), an early online service. She overheard the company’s CEO, Steve Case, who was working on a new software package for the service, was considering adding a voice to tell users certain things. Karen suggested her husband for the job. Edwards didn’t go into a fancy studio to record the prompts, he just went into his livingroom, used a regular cassette recorder, and recorded just four phrases: “Welcome!”, “You’ve got mail.”, “File’s done.”, and “Goodbye.” He submitted the tape and was paid $200.
Later that year Q-Link got a new name to go with the new software: America Online, or AOL, with his voice included. AOL marked itself by sending out floppy disks, and later CDs, loaded with its software — by the millions. “I remember standing in line at CompUSA,” Edwards said, “and seeing [stacks of the CDs] and thinking my voice is on every one of those, and nobody has a clue.” Around 1995, he said, AOL told him that his voice was triggered for users more than 35 million times …per day. “You’ve got mail” was so ubiquitous, it was the title of Nora Ephron’s 1998 film starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Edwards could identify with the rom-com about a couple (Hanks and Ryan) who meet on AOL: he had met Karen on Q-Link.
Edwards retired from the TV station in 2014, but still ran a little side gig online: he made custom .wav sound files and sold them through his web site. He was also invited to do a skit on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in 2015, where he started, of course, with “Welcome! You’ve got mail,” then said seven more words provided by Fallon, and then left after saying “File’s done. Goodbye.” He also made a cameo on The Simpsons, playing a doctor (“You’ve got leprosy! Goodbye.”). Well into the 21st century, he said he would still connect to AOL, “and greet myself.” Elwood Hughes Edwards Jr. had a stroke, and died at his home in North Carolina on November 5, the day before he was to turn 75.