A Kiss That Was Never Supposed to Be Seen
It began as a moment meant for lighthearted laughter, the kind of fleeting distraction stadium audiences have grown accustomed to. The “kiss cam” at Coldplay’s sold-out concert at Gillette Stadium flicked from couple to couple, capturing bashful grins, awkward pecks, and the occasional showy embrace.
But when the lens landed on Kristin Cabot, 52, and Andy Byron, 50, it froze on something altogether different.
There was no hesitation. No polite glance around to check who was watching. Instead, Kristin — married to Andrew Cabot, 60, scion of one of Boston’s wealthiest dynasties — leaned in with abandon. Andy Byron, himself a prominent tech executive, wrapped his arms around her. The kiss wasn’t a mistake. It was possession.
And then, in the way only modern spectacle allows, their private embrace became public humiliation: their faces projected onto a giant screen before 66,000 fans, and within hours, replayed millions of times across TikTok, Instagram, and X.
When Kristin finally realized where she was — not in the shadows but under the white-hot spotlight of Coldplay’s stage cameras — her hands flew to her mouth. Byron pulled away. They both ducked. But the damage was done.
Even Chris Martin, watching from the stage, couldn’t help but quip: “Either they’re having an affair, or they’re just very shy.”
The crowd roared. The internet sharpened its knives.
And Boston’s oldest money family braced for a scandal unlike any they had faced in their centuries of insulated privilege.
The Cabots: A Dynasty With a Price Tag
To understand why this kiss sent tremors beyond a marriage, one must understand the name: Cabot.
Old Boston has long been defined by the so-called “Brahmin” families — dynasties of shipping, manufacturing, and finance who built fortunes while others built the nation’s roads. The Cabots are perhaps the most legendary of them all.
Their name is immortalized in a mocking verse about Boston’s aloof elite:
“And this is good old Boston, the home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots, and the Cabots talk only to God.”
Ten generations of Cabots built fortunes in shipping, tire manufacturing, and, more recently, rum. Their holdings are whispered to exceed $15 billion, a sum that translates not only to wealth but to cultural clout, political sway, and social dominance across New England.
It is a family that once seemed untouchable. Until now.
The Woman at the Center
Kristin entered Andrew Cabot’s life after his divorce from his second wife, Julia. She was glamorous in a different way than Boston society’s typical pedigreed wives — not from old money, but sharp, ambitious, and savvy. She met Andrew in 2020, after joining the advisory board of Privateer Rum, his family’s jewel business.
By 2023, they were married. By early 2025, they had purchased a $2.2 million waterfront property in Rye, New Hampshire, a sprawling clapboard home meant to be a marital retreat.
Neighbors saw them as settled, even content. Kristin played the role of devoted wife with apparent ease. But beneath the curated exterior, the cracks were already showing.
Sources close to the family whispered of “arguments over money,” “Andrew’s obsession with control,” and Kristin’s growing frustration with her role as second-tier in a dynasty that never fully embraced outsiders.
And then came that summer night in Foxborough.
The Other Man
Andy Byron was no stranger to power either. The CEO of Astronomer, a rising tech company, he lived in the same rarefied air as the Cabots, though by way of innovation rather than inheritance.
He was also married — to Megan Kerrigan, a 50-year-old education professional with whom he shared two teenage sons.
When the kiss cam outed Byron and Kristin, the fallout was immediate. Byron resigned from his company within days. Megan removed “Byron” from her surname on social media and retreated to the family’s luxury home in Kennebunkport, Maine. Their marriage, though not legally dissolved yet, was described by friends as “irretrievable.”
For Kristin, the cost was even higher. She attempted to take a leave of absence from her own position but soon resigned. And though she initially avoided addressing her marriage publicly, the truth could not be suppressed forever.
By August 13, less than a month after the kiss cam incident, Kristin had filed for divorce from Andrew Cabot.
The Husband Who “Didn’t Care”
If Kristin expected Andrew to be devastated, she was mistaken.
According to Julia Cabot, Andrew’s second wife and now one of his most vocal critics, Andrew was unfazed.
“I texted Andrew right after it happened,” Julia told the Daily Mail. “He said: ‘Her life is nothing to do with me.’ And then added they were separating.”
Julia’s assessment was brutal: “He’s a money-obsessed ego-maniac. That’s what I call karma. He’s not a nice person. Now something not nice happened to him.”
Her words echoed across Boston’s gossip mills. Suddenly, the narrative wasn’t simply about Kristin’s infidelity. It was about the kind of man Andrew Cabot was, and whether this very public humiliation was the universe balancing its scales.
The Fall of Appearances
Boston’s elite prides itself on discretion. Affairs happen, fortunes shift, but never — never — are these things allowed to spill into the public domain.
The kiss cam destroyed that unwritten contract.
Neighbors whispered. Partners asked questions. Reporters camped outside the Cabots’ Rye estate. Andrew, returning from a trip to Japan days after the concert, found himself ambushed by cameras and questions he had no script to answer.
The word that circulated among insiders was “blindsided.”
But in truth, cracks in the marriage were visible even before Andrew left for Asia. Court documents revealed that the couple had attempted mediation. Insiders suggested they had been “discussing separation for months.”
And yet, only weeks before, they had paraded their love publicly, smiling for photographs and posting curated images online. The dissonance between image and reality could not have been starker.
Three Marriages, Three Endings
For Andrew, this marked divorce number three.
His first marriage, which produced two children, ended in 2011 after 18 years. His second, to Julia, collapsed in 2018 after four turbulent years and a bitter legal fight over a prenup. Now, his third marriage was unraveling in full public view.
Kristin, once welcomed as a new fixture in Boston’s high society, was now recast as the woman who had embarrassed a dynasty.
For Byron, the fallout was equally destructive. Once lauded as a tech innovator, he became synonymous with betrayal, the kiss cam his scarlet letter. Megan’s quiet removal of his name was as loud a statement as any press release.
A Dynasty Shaken
What does all of this mean for the Cabot dynasty?
On paper, little. Their fortune remains. Their businesses continue. Their assets stretch from Beacon Hill to Kennebunkport.
But reputations are currencies of their own, especially in a city like Boston, where heritage often matters as much as dollars.
And here, the damage is undeniable.
The Cabots were supposed to be untouchable. Yet their name was splashed across tabloids, mocked in memes, dissected on podcasts. The dynasty that once “spoke only to God” was now being shouted about by millions online.
The whispers grew darker: that the Cabots protected their own at all costs, that betrayals were smoothed over not with forgiveness but with silence, that Kristin’s fall was just another example of what happens when outsiders step into their fortress.
The Question That Remains
As the dust settles, two marriages are broken, two careers ended, and Boston society finds itself talking about something it never imagined: the fragility of its most powerful name.
But one question lingers in every conversation, in every whisper outside Beacon Hill townhouses and New England boardrooms:
If this is what happens when a kiss is caught on camera…
What else lies hidden behind the doors of a dynasty worth $15 billion?
