In the summer of 2024, a seemingly ordinary night at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, turned into a viral storm that would upend the lives of two corporate executives—and their families—far beyond what anyone in the crowd could have imagined. Kristin Cabot, then chief people officer at tech company Astronomer, and her boss, CEO Andy Byron, found themselves thrust into the national spotlight after being caught on the Coldplay concert kiss cam, embracing and then ducking away from the camera’s gaze as Chris Martin, Coldplay’s frontman, joked to the crowd, "Either they're having an affair, or they're just very shy."
The video, which showed Cabot and Byron swaying to the music before their awkward retreat, quickly went viral. It was watched millions of times, shared and reshared across social media, and became fodder for late-night jokes, memes, and even celebrity commentary. But as the internet’s attention span flickered elsewhere, for Cabot and Byron, the fallout had only just begun.
According to The Times and The New York Times, both Cabot and Byron were married to other people at the time of the concert. Cabot’s estranged husband, Andrew, was even at the same Coldplay show. In the immediate aftermath, both executives lost their jobs: Byron resigned after Astronomer’s board launched an internal investigation, and Cabot stepped down soon after. In a statement, Astronomer said, "Andy Byron has tendered his resignation, and the Board of Directors has accepted." The company doubled down on its values, affirming, "Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability."
While a source close to both Cabot and Byron insisted in September 2024 that they weren’t having an affair, the optics were damning. Both had families, and both were prominent figures in their company. Cabot, for her part, has since spoken publicly about the incident, offering a candid and sometimes painful look into what life has been like since that night. In her first interview since the video, she told The New York Times, "I made a bad decision and had a couple of High Noons and danced and acted inappropriately with my boss. And it’s not nothing. And I took accountability and I gave up my career for that. That’s the price I chose to pay."
The humiliation was immediate and overwhelming. "I was so embarrassed and so horrified," Cabot recalled. "I’m the head of HR and he’s the CEO. It’s, like, so cliché and so bad." Her thoughts raced to her estranged husband: "My immediate reaction was, ‘Holy s—, Andrew’s here.’ We were in the middle of an incredibly, and amazingly, amicable separation. I was worried I would embarrass him. He’s an amazing guy and does not deserve that." Andrew Cabot later confirmed that they were separated at the time of the concert.
But what followed was something neither Kristin Cabot nor her family could have predicted. The video’s virality made her the "most maligned HR manager in HR history," as she told The Times. The public shaming was relentless. Cabot described becoming a meme, her appearance, body, face, and clothes picked apart by strangers online. High-profile celebrities, including Whoopi Goldberg, piled on, and Gwyneth Paltrow—Chris Martin’s ex-wife—joined in with a tongue-in-cheek promotional video for Astronomer. The scrutiny was both global and deeply personal.
Cabot’s ordeal extended far beyond social media. She received threatening messages, including one that read, "I’m coming for you," and her children became fearful for their safety. "My kids were afraid that I was going to die and they were going to die," she told The New York Times. The family began to dread public spaces and social events. Her private information was posted online in a practice known as doxxing, and for weeks, she was bombarded with up to 600 calls a day. Paparazzi camped outside her home in what she described as a "parade," and she received between 50 and 60 death threats.
Cabot also noted the gendered nature of the backlash. "I think as a woman, as women always do, I took the bulk of the abuse. People would say things like I was a 'gold-digger' or I 'slept my way to the top', which just couldn't be further from reality," she said. "I worked so hard to dispel that all my life and here I was being accused of it." Most of the harassment, she observed, came from other women, both in person and through messages and phone calls.
The toll on her family has been steep. Her two children, she said, are too embarrassed to be picked up from school by their mother or to attend sports games. "They're mad at me. And they can be mad at me for the rest of their lives—I have to take that." Seeking to help her children heal, Cabot has found therapists for them and has begun to re-enter public life herself, taking up tennis and slowly returning to normal routines. "It’s not over for me, and it’s not over for my kids. The harassment never ended," she told The Times.
Professionally, the fallout has been just as severe. Cabot, now 53, said she has been told she is "unemployable." Despite her years of experience and achievements, her career has been eclipsed by a single, very public mistake. "It has been like a scarlet letter; people erased everything I’d accomplished in my life and achieved in my career. This can’t be the final word," she said. She wants her children to know that "you can make mistakes, and you can really screw up. But you don’t have to be threatened to be killed for them."
For his part, Andy Byron has not spoken publicly about the incident. A fake statement attributed to him, filled with Coldplay lyrics, circulated online after the concert, prompting Astronomer to issue an official denial. Byron and his wife were later seen having a picnic on a Maine beach in late September 2024, but otherwise, he has remained silent. Cabot and Byron have not spoken since their brief exchange of "crisis management advice" in the days after the video went viral. As Cabot explained, "speaking with each other was going to make it too hard for everyone to move on and heal."
The story of Kristin Cabot and Andy Byron is a cautionary tale for the digital age, where a fleeting moment can spiral into a life-altering scandal. For Cabot, the journey toward healing continues, marked by resilience, regret, and the hope that this chapter will not define her—or her family—forever.
