The Anthony-Lopez Show

"This is my office" he says, gesturing at the stage. But he's agreed to give up the corner executive suite. And maybe the prime parking space, too: While Lopez and Anthony will share a bus (and his longtime band) on the road, they'll have their own luxury coaches parked outside the venues.

Still, Anthony says: "There's no competition."

"There isn't," Lopez insists.

But somebody has to go first during the tour. Anthony says: "I want to open, so I can run back to my bus and play Xbox. I'll be kicking back, going, 'Let mama sweat now' while I'm playing."

Lopez shrieks: "That's exactly why he wants to do it! I don't even want to go on after him; he's hard to follow. But it's good because while he's onstage, I'll have an extra hour to do my hair and makeup."

"Just an hour?" Anthony prods.

"Oh, no; I'll have to start, like, an hour before that," says Lopez, who doesn't appear in public looking anything less than perfectly dolled up. "These are all very practical decisions, see? I get extra time to get ready. But the truth is that it's two performers working together on one show. He'll go on first and we'll interact in the middle of the show, then he'll come back later. It's not somebody opening for somebody else."

Lopez glances at her husband for affirmation -- something both of them do frequently. But Anthony isn't paying attention: He's gazing at the arena rafters, apparently still suffering from the previous night's soiree to celebrate his 39th birthday. (Lopez rented a yacht and filled it with Anthony's friends for a surprise party on the East River.) Lopez repeats herself, talking about two performers, one show, etc. Anthony nods approvingly.

"It's rare to find what we have in our relationship," Lopez says. "We expect a lot of each other, and we push each other to do more than we think we can do, but there's no competition. It's just: How can I help Marc do better? And he's doing the same thing, helping me and protecting me and pushing me to do more than I think I can do. It's a real blessing to find somebody who you have that with."

"Definitely," Anthony says. As a general rule, Lopez and Anthony don't sit together for interviews. They almost never pose with each other for portraits, either. "They don't do couples covers," their publicist says. "They're two people with their own careers." They are not Sonny and Cher, or Ashford and Simpson, or Captain & Tennille. Love -- most certainly not newspaper or magazine stories -- will keep them together, apparently.

But now Lopez and Anthony are sitting in adjacent, cushioned, totally unglamorous folding chairs in a northern New Jersey sports complex, answering questions together about their professions and their lives (not necessarily in that order) because they've been working together with increasing regularity. Anthony did some production work on Lopez's first Spanish-language album, "Como Ama una Mujer" ("How a Woman Loves"), which arrived with a commercial thud in March; and the couple co-starred in "El Cantante," a biopic about the late salsa singer H¿ctor Lavoe. Now comes the tour, dubbed Juntos en Concierto (Together in Concert).

If you're going to sell it as two artists on equal footing joining forces for a single show, it'd be kinda strange to have said artists do separate interviews, no? Plus, doing it this way is so much more exciting , at least for us. More revealing, too.