The woman at the centre of the Coldplay couple controversy was “not hiding” because her husband was at the same concert with a date, a source has revealed.
Kristin Cabot, the head of human resources at the technology company Astronomer, was caught on camera hugging Andy Byron, the company’s chief executive, and seen on the big screen at Boston’s Gillette Stadium in July.
Cabot quickly turned her back and Byron ducked out of sight, leading the Coldplay frontman Chris Martin to joke that “either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy”.
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Reports claimed that Cabot’s husband, Andrew, was in Japan at the time. But a source has told The Times: “He was in fact at the same Coldplay concert as Kristin.”
The source added: “They had been separated and living apart for several weeks. It was amicable. Kristin was in the box with people from work, though it wasn’t a company box, and Andrew was actually there too with a date, with a woman who is now his girlfriend.
“[Cabot] has felt like she can’t speak out as people in the middle of a divorce can’t say anything public,” the source said.
Andy Byron resigned in July
“Kristin wasn’t hiding, she doesn’t know why she ducked. She knew it was inappropriate to behave that way with her boss as the head of HR,” the source said, adding that the relationship [between Cabot and Byron] was just a “great friendship”.
“It was not that she was caught cheating, it was not some affair,” they said. “She fully acknowledges [the hug] was inappropriate, but that was the only inappropriate thing she did.”
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Astronomer, which helps businesses grow using artificial intelligence, announced Byron’s resignation on July 19. Days later, Cabot also resigned.
Cabot, 52, filed a petition for divorce on August 13 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Mr Cabot, 61, is the chief executive of Privateer Rum and hails from one of the oldest and wealthiest families in Boston. According to a New York Times profile, the Cabot family is worth $15.4 billion.
Mr Cabot has two kids from a previous marriage but does not share any children with Ms Cabot.
Mr and Mrs Cabot with his two children
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The source revealed that Byron was also separated and living apart from his wife at the time, though they have not filed for divorce.
His wife, Megan Kerrigan Byron, removed the last name “Bryon” from her Facebook account before deactivating the page the day after the concert. She has two children with Byron and works as a teacher at Bancroft School in Massachusetts.
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A TikTok video capturing the pair’s reaction has been viewed tens of millions of times, becoming one of the most viral moments in recent years. Merchandise sellers have sought ways to make money from the scandal, with one Etsy retailer offering a T-shirt that read “I Took My Sidepiece To The Coldplay Concert And It Ruined My Life” for $23.
The source said Kristin Cabot withdrew from the public eye and for weeks barely left the family home in New Hampshire, incredulous that the incident had sparked such an intense reaction. They said she had tried to shield her children from attention.
Cabot, who worked in advertising for 22 years before moving to tech in 2016, no longer has a job and has received hundreds of death threats since the incident, the source said. “The thing is, something like this could happen to anyone, she was just very very unlucky,” the source said.
“She could not believe that this could be such a global story,” they added. “The level of cruelty and vitriol lobbied at her was unfathomable.”