Rollin King, the man who co-founded Southwest Airlines and changed the way Americans travel, is dead at 83 from complications arising from a stroke he suffered last year, the Dallas Morning News reports.

“His idea to create a low-cost, low-fare, better service quality airline in Texas subsequently proved to be an empirical role model for not only the U.S. as a whole but, ultimately, for all of the world’s inhabited continents,” said Herbert Kelleher, Southwest’s other co-founder and chairman emeritus, in a statement.

According to legend, King suggested the idea of an intrastate Texas airline to Kelleher at a San Antonio bar in 1967. King allegedly drew the initial route plan for Southwest, a triangle connecting Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, on a cocktail napkin. The story goes that Kelleher responded, “Rollin, you’re crazy. Let’s do it.”

King revealed to the Dallas Morning News in 2007 that this origin story was largely apocryphal. The cocktail napkin never existed, and Kelleher was initially more skeptical of the plan. But it was “a hell of a good story.”

From that early three-city route, Southwest has grown into one of the world’s largest airlines with more than 100 million passengers annually and $17.7 billion in revenue last year, the New York Times reports.

“The extended family of Southwest Airlines employees and retirees shares in the loss of Rollin King and honors the legacy of affordable air travel he sparked more than 40 years ago,” said Southwest CEO, Gary Kelly, in a statement.