Jeanne grew up in Long Island, New York and, alongside her highly successful solo career, she is also an accomplished chamber musician, touring regularly with her trio, Zephyr. Jeanne and James now live in Meggen, Switzerland, and their Irish performance dates are 6 May, the Waterfront, Belfast; 9, the Millennium Forum, Derry; 10, The Helix, Dublin; 12, INEC, Killarney; and 13, Royal Theatre, Castlebar.

Jeanne on James I first met James when he came to New York to make his American debut in 1978.

I was studying flute and, when he came to give a class, my girlfriend and I were so excited. The first thing I noticed was that he was as cute as a button, and had a great sense of humour. He handed some gold flutes around the class, and started to play, and I had never heard anybody else with the technique and sound and spirit he brought to his music.

We met again at Carnegie Hall in 1982, and James phoned me up and invited me for lunch. He courted me for two years, and used to come to my tiny little apartment and bring me Swiss chocolates.

But I was very strong on not getting involved with him, initially. I never wanted to get married or have children, because all I wanted to do was play my music. We developed a very strong friendship, and he made me laugh and was very caring, and it got that I began to miss him whenever he left. Then out of the blue he asked me to marry him in 1984. He said he wanted to get me before I went off to the middle of nowhere to play the flute in an orchestra.

We have a very special relationship, and I've also had a wonderful relationship with my step-children from the beginning.

The only difficulty I encountered at first was that I didn't realise that, when I married James, I married a corporation, because when you marry someone famous who has a career in full swing, there are a lot of other people controlling their life.

They all have a hand in the pot, so they don't want this woman coming in and asking questions like, "Where is the money going?" It's probably come full circle now, because we manage his career from home, and I'm the one that does all the packing and organisation and tour scheduling.

My husband and I live in Switzerland, and we love it there, but we visit Belfast quite often . . . we actually bought my engagement ring there. We're two health addicts, because James had a bad heart scare several years ago, so we took that very seriously! We eat vegetarian, and grill fish, and have reduced our alcohol level down to practically nothing. We also work very hard on making our relationship work, and we really enjoy each other's company.

My husband is very positive and knows who he is, and he's very comfortable in himself, and what he's achieved in life. It's such a special quality and he was able to bring that to me, because I was brought up in a very competitive atmosphere at school in New York. He always made me feel very good about myself and my playing, which has been the greatest gift he has given to me in music, and in life generally. It's wonderful performing with him on stage, and he makes me laugh. It's a very special experience.

James on Jeanne My wife and I have been together for 25 years now, and the thing that first attracted me to her is that she's a very outgoing and happy sort of person, who really seemed to enjoy life.

Jeanne plays the flute very well, but I would have been attracted to her even if she didn't play. We got married in London in the registry office, and then had a blessing in Switzerland, which is where we live. We travel together all the time, and the one thing about our relationship is that it's 24 hours a day. In our spare time, we like watching movies and cooking, and we play backgammon . . . Jeanne is currently the champion. And, even to this day, we just love hanging out together.

Jeanne is a very caring and loving person, and really goes out of her way to make everyone around her happy. She's a full-time musician as well, and she does a lot of her own stuff apart from performing with me. I'm from Belfast and she's American, but I kinda figured out what she was talking about after about 10 years!

I was knighted in 2001 and Jeanne enjoys being a Lady. Jamesie is her name for me, but she calls me "Sir" when she wants to get my attention. It's hilarious in one way but the curious thing is that, when you get given an honour like this, you feel very strongly that you have to represent what's behind it by your actions. I think they're very pleased with it back where I'm from in Belfast, because it's a sort of royalist place anyway.

Jeanne and I believe that a lot of the causes are very deserving and need our support, and so we both do a lot of charitable work. And one thing Her Majesty forgot to tell me when she was giving me the knighthood was, "If you think you work hard already, just wait until you see what's going to happen now!"

The thing is that everyone jumps on the bandwagon, saying, "Sir James, we need an iron lung" here, or "Can you do this for us?" there, so there are many causes that we support.

People love to come to see us perform together, and we don't ever try to play better than one another. Jeanne always looks magnificent on stage in her dresses, and we're both very much looking forward to coming over and performing in Ireland.