How was my CEO able to do this, and not only keep her job but also most people's respect?

In light of the Coldplay incident, this just had me thinking back to a company I used to work for - which happens to be kind of a big deal, mostly in my state and adjacent ones (it's tourism related and a local staple, but a HUGE staple, so worth a lot).

And yeah this might be hard to answer since obviously you don't know her, but I'm sure Reddit will have some possible suggestions.

So I've never really had any problem with this woman - she always seemed a mix of professional and chill when she was around. Though I did find something out about her at some point which was a little disturbing - and this is not some rumor, this is something many people openly know as company history lore.

What happened was many years ago, while she was already CEO, she had an extramarital affair with an employee - not anyone in a high position, just an low entry level employee doing the same thing as me basically. Don't know the details of the initial aftermath, but that affair partner eventually became her current husband.

Somehow, despite all this, she still stands as CEO, despite this being widely known by many, and people still respect and take her seriously - almost like there were no consequences from this.

The only "result" of this, is that apparently this is the reason there were a lot of relationships between co-workers, mainly because HR would mostly look the other way in regards to any ethical issues from that - with the reason for that being what happened with the CEO. Which seems fair.

Still though... what happened at the Coldplay concert seems very small compared to this, and yet they're getting shit for it. So how was this woman able to just get through this like it was nothing?