Coldplay kiss cam HR boss breaks silence for first time with shocking revelation: 'My husband was there'

The former Astronomer executive 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. I took accountability and I gave up my career for that. That’s the price I chose to pay.”

The 53-year-old acknowledged harbouring a “crush” on then-chief executive Andy Byron but maintained the pair had never kissed prior to that July evening in Boston.

What many observers did not realise at the time was that Ms Cabot’s estranged husband, Andrew, was present at the same concert, attending with a date of his own.

The couple had been married for two years but had already separated when the footage was recorded, according to Ms Cabot.

A spokesperson for Andrew later confirmed the pair “were privately and amicably separated several weeks before the Coldplay concert”, adding that divorce proceedings were already under way prior to the event.

Mr Byron had also separated from his wife Megan, a schoolteacher, around a month before the concert.

Ms Cabot said learning that both she and Mr Byron were navigating marital breakdowns at the same time created an unexpected bond.

“To have someone else going through it at the exact same time that you can talk to was an amazing support,” she said.

The moment their images appeared on the giant screen, Ms Cabot said she felt an overwhelming sense of dread.

“Everything just flashed before my eyes,” she recalled, after Coldplay frontman Chris Martin joked to the crowd: “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.”

Mr Byron, spotting himself on the jumbotron, appeared to mutter an expletive before ducking out of view.

The former HR boss said her thoughts immediately turned to her estranged husband somewhere in the crowd.

“My immediate reaction was, ‘Holy s***, Andrew’s here,’” she said. “I was worried I would embarrass him. He’s an amazing guy and does not deserve that.”

Professional concerns quickly followed.

“I’m the head of HR and he’s the CEO. It’s so cliché and so bad,” she added.

The aftermath of the 16-second clip proved devastating for Ms Cabot’s personal life and career.

She said she received more than 60 death threats, was doxed, and for weeks faced hundreds of phone calls a day as paparazzi camped outside her home.

She has since been confronted in public, including by a woman at a petrol station who called her “disgusting” and declared that “adulterers are the lowest form of human”.

Celebrities including Whoopi Goldberg joined in mocking the incident, while Ms Cabot said Astronomer hiring Chris Martin’s ex-wife Gwyneth Paltrow for a subsequent commercial felt deeply hypocritical.

“I became a meme. I was the most maligned HR manager in HR history,” she said, adding that she faced particularly harsh scrutiny as a woman, including accusations of being a “gold-digger” who had “slept her way to the top”.

Ms Cabot said she has since been told by potential employers that she is effectively “unemployable”.

She has now enlisted crisis communications consultant Dini von Mueffling, who previously represented Monica Lewinsky and the late Virginia Giuffre, to help rebuild her reputation and draw attention to what she describes as the destructive impact of online mob justice.

The fallout has also taken a toll on her family.

Her children are now reluctant to be seen with her in public, refusing to let her collect them from school or attend sporting events.

“They’re mad at me,” she said. “And they can be mad at me for the rest of their lives. I have to take that.”

She added: “I want my kids to know that you can make mistakes, and you can really screw up, but you don’t deserve to be threatened with death for them.”