Elwood Edwards, the man behind AOL’s iconic voice alerts has died at age 74. He passed away from an undisclosed illness on Nov. 5, a day before his 75th birthday.

Those of us who used the Internet in the 90’s will be familiar with AOL and how they dominated the online experience.

In 1989, Mr. Edwards was asked to record four alerts for AOL, including “You’ve got mail,” “Welcome,” “File’s done,” and “Goodbye.” His wife Karen worked for Quantum Computer Services, who would later become AOL. She overheard one of the companies co-founders saying that it would be fun to add a voice to their program, and she volunteered Elwood as he had been an announcer at a local TV station.

He recorded the alerts on a simple cassette recorder in his living room. Initially, the voice alerts were an experiment, but people liked them and it caught on.

He was only paid $200 for his recordings and by the mid-90s, his alerts were being heard up to 35 million times a day.

The iconic “You’ve got mail” phrase even inspired the 1998 romcom of the same name.