Three little words changed many people’s introduction to the Internet: “You’ve got mail.” Elwood Edwards, the voice behind the AOL alert, has died at his home in New Bern, North Carolina. He was 74.

Be it working on behind-the-scenes graphics, operating the camera or lending his voice, Edwards excelled at his job. But it was a random opportunity in 1989 that made his voice famous.

Back then, his wife Karen, who worked at Quantum Computer Services (later became AOL) as a customer service representative, heard that the company was looking to add a voice to its software.

Karen mentioned her husband’s name. He scribbled four phases on a piece of paper — “you’ve got mail”, “welcome”, “files done” and “goodbye” and then recorded it on his cassette deck. “It started off as a test just to see if it would catch on, and lo and behold, in the mid-90s, it had really caught on,” Edwards said years ago. “At one point, they said my voice was heard more than 35 million times a day.”

Tom Hanks in the film You've Got Mail

The problem was he was typecast and this was seen when his voice was used in The Simpsons as a virtual doctor giving a diagnosis —“you’ve got leprosy”.

The words “you’ve got mail” became globally famous when Nora Ephron directed Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in the classic film of the same name in 1998. Ryan, who plays the role of Kathleen Kelly, says in the film: “What will NY152 say today? I wonder. I turn on my computer. I wait impatiently as it connects. I go online, and my breath catches in my chest until I hear three little words: ‘You’ve got mail.’ I hear nothing. Not even a sound on the streets of New York, just the beat of my own heart. I have mail. From you.”

Edwards appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2015 to recite his catchphrase.