She’s been in the hands of over 100 million people. Perhaps she’s slept on your nightstand. She may have even drunk-dialed your ex.

And guess what: Susan Bennett, the original voice of Apple’s Siri, never saw it coming.

“A fellow voice actor emailed me and said ‘We’re playing around with this new iPhone, isn’t this you?’ So I went on the Apple site and listened and said ‘Oh my god, yes. Wow! How did this happen?'” 00:11 Play audio

How do you become the most popular voice of the most successful tech company in the world—without your knowledge?

I interviewed Susan about her stumble into fame, then plotted her life against the rise of more human-like virtual assistants. It turns out that her voice appeared at two pivotal moments in the development of talking tech.

It makes you wonder, was Susan destined to become the world’s most recognizable digital voice?

Let’s start at the beginning.

A voice for an analog world

“Back in the day when we used to have telephone operators, I would just play with this phone… Is it destiny that I became a voice on hundreds and hundreds of phone systems? I don’t know, maybe it was meant to be.” 00:19 Play audio

Susan was born into an analog world, where transistor radios carried the tunes of Elvis and Chuck Berry, and dialing a zero on a phone meant tracing a large circle around a rotary dial.

What was Susan up to?

“I was a musician, I was playing the piano by ear at the age of 4. So I knew that music was a huge part of my life. I never believed that I could actually make a living at it, though.” 00:11 Play audio

But she did. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Susan toured as a backup singer for Burt Bacharach and Roy Orbison. She also sang jingles on radio and TV commercials.

Then one day, a voice actor didn’t show up at the recording studio. Susan got pulled in to substitute. And she was good.

Accident number 1: a voice acting career.

And over in a parallel universe, visionaries and engineers were starting to shape Susan’s digital future.