The most interesting couple in Kansas City is staying in tonight.

They could go out, of course. There are two parties this evening — get-togethers with friends that sounded promising — and Annie Cherry and Damian Blake are the kind of people who rarely find themselves without something to do. The kind of people blessed with a barrage of quirky and interesting friends. People who, like them, are all about grabbing each day, each hour, each minute and draining the absolute most from it.

But tonight they are staying in and they seem perfectly content with this. They are sitting on a couch in the living room of the quirky Kansas City home they share, the one with the turquoise walls, skulls, big, old-fashioned bird cages that house the parakeets that can sometimes get a little squawky and the five cats including the gray one, Newt, who spends a good deal of time rubbing against the legs of visitors.

At the moment they are talking about love, which seems appropriate because they are very much in it. They’re the first couple of Kansas City’s theater scene, rock stars within their particular social circle.

The two perform together through the Kansas City Society of Burlesque. They put on “The Nightcap With Arty Vulgaris,” a faux talk show in which Damian stars as a sleazy, chain-drinking late-night talk show host and Annie stars as his buxom producer. They run an antique booth at the River Market Antique Mall called Bohemian Oddities, and stage variety shows and brainstorm ambitious projects that they then set about implementing.

She is tall and pretty, with bright orange hair and a welcoming smile and she sometimes asks for tattoo suggestions from her Facebook friends. He is handsome and a little shy, with a day job at Hallmark and a mustache that he sometimes strokes while thinking. They have matching anchor tattoos, which they got on a whim in Salem, Mass. They finish each other’s sentences, but not in an annoying way.

They love creepy antiques and geeking out about old-timey fashion (while watching a recent episode of “Downton Abbey,” they devoted a decent chunk of time to discussing the buttons on one of the character’s jackets) and raising Owen, Annie’s 8-year-old son from her first marriage.

Around town, they are known foremost as performers and it can be easy to assume that all the on-stage hoopla is nothing more than choreographed chemistry, a manufactured dose of performance art. Except that it isn’t. Because all the things that make them so good together onstage, all the fire and the passion and the chemistry, are just as potent when the stage lights are extinguished.

Away from the stage, they are still very much connected.

They are still very much in love.

“You see some people who are couples and you go, ‘OK, that makes sense,’ ” says Katie Gilchrist, a local actor/director who has worked extensively with the pair. “And then you see people that are so genuinely right together that you cannot fathom them being with anyone else.”

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She was born in Independence, the only child of two Kansas City-based artists.

She was shy and a little bit of a tomboy and she quickly developed a fondness for the arts. She attended Kansas City Middle School of the Arts and high school at Paseo Academy of Fine and Performing Arts, back when it was still a beacon of artistic expression. She immersed herself in the intricacies of visual art. She once attended a performance of “The Nutcracker” at Truman High School and remembers a backstage snafu in which one of the people whose job it was to gradually release a canopy of artificial snow onto the stage accidentally released all the snow at once.

She got older. She married, had a son, divorced.

She decided, shortly after having a child, to give belly dancing a try. She got the performing bug. She began attending Kansas City Society of Burlesque meetings where she would develop into a troupe favorite, and one night a handsome, mustachioed guy showed up to a Halloween-themed performance at Korruption in the West Bottoms.

She’d never met him before but something about him struck her and as she stood at the bar that night and watched him perform, she told her best friend, “I want one like that.”

She saw him more and more and became increasingly enamored. She brainstormed material for him and looked for reasons to contact him. Hey, you should do a Houdini routine . She showed up for a photo shoot at Korruption in January of 2009 and was pleasantly surprised when the photographers kept matching her and Damian, asking them to pose together.

She sort of resigned herself that it was never going to work out. They were part of the same troupe and she was in a relationship and he was in a relationship and, well, that’s not exactly a recipe for success. She heard in January that he had recently become available and so she broke up with her boyfriend soon after because, who knows?

She was ecstatic when he asked her out a month later, for dinner at Le Fou Frog. She was nervous — not like him, who she remembers being so calm and collected — and so she drank too much. She said yes again when he asked her to a Mardi Gras party. And again when he asked her to go antique shopping. She went with him to Oklahoma City in July of 2009 for an out-of-town performance and later she would remember how natural the whole trip felt, how organic, how everything came so easily.

She and Owen moved into his Kansas City house in January of 2010. She brought her three cats to go along with his two and her collection of bizarre antiques to go along with his collection of bizarre antiques.

She thought about the vow she’d made after her first marriage ended to never get married again and about how now she wasn’t so sure.

A year or so ago she came across a handwritten list of criteria she’d made years before describing the perfect partner, a list packed with items ranging from “knows what it’s like to be a performer” to “can manage his finances,” and was shocked when she realized that he met all 20 requirements.

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He was born in Independence, the oldest son of a school teacher and a parts purchaser.

He was shy and imaginative, and from a young age he developed an affinity for the arts. He starred in a couple of musicals as a student at Truman High School, sang in show choir, learned some of the behind-the-scenes skills that would eventually come in handy in Kansas City’s performing arts scene. Once he worked as a tech guy at a performance of “The Nutcracker” at his high school and during a scene that called for a little bit of snow, accidentally released the entire canopy at once, blanketing the stage in white.

He got older, headed to nearby Park College and got more into art. He married, he divorced. He started acting, got the bug.

He showed up at a meeting of the Kansas City Society of Burlesque one night a few years ago. He had been doing Charlie Chaplain impersonations around town at street performances and some private events but was relatively new to the city’s theater scene. He remembers meeting a woman named Annie and being a bit discombobulated because he thought she was a big deal. He was immediately attracted to her and found her mysterious, but moved slowly because she was in a relationship and he respects that sort of thing.

He had a small New Year’s Eve get-together and had a copy of a local magazine in which Annie had been pictured. He took a picture of his cat sitting on it and fired off a text message that said, “Just hanging out on New Year’s Eve with you and my cat.”

He had recently become single. At a meeting he heard that she’d recently broken up with her boyfriend, and his ears perked up. He started talking to her online by witty Facebook posts, that sort of thing. He thinks that sounds cheesy now, but what are you gonna do?

He finally asked her out. He took her to Le Fou Frog in the River Market. He was nervous — not like her, who he remembers being so calm and collected — and so he drank too much. He asked her out again. And again after that. He took her to a carnival, to an antique shop. He worried about making sure the dates were creative and exciting enough because, as he puts it, “She’s classy, and I wanted to impress her.”

He says now, “I tried hard. I tried really hard.

He joined her on a trip to Oklahoma City for a burlesque-inspired show. He stopped in a ghost town on the way and they took pictures at an old train depot. He took her for pie in a tiny little speck of a town and later he would remember how natural it all felt, how organic, how everything came so easily.

He helped her move into his Kansas City home in January of 2010, and a month later, he took her to a photo booth in Crown Center and inserted some change.

And then, as the camera whirred and clicked and caught the whole thing in real time, he asked her to spend the rest of her life with him.

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They’ve been married for almost a year now. The wedding was in March, at the Arts Incubator in the Crossroads Arts District, although calling it a “wedding” doesn’t quite do the whole thing justice. They did not know how to plan a wedding, but they did know how to put on a show and so that’s what they did.

They told guests to wear whatever made them happy, which meant that some came as cross-dressers and one came as a tattooed bearded lady and one groomsman wore a bear suit. Owen was the ring bearer, delivering the ring on the tongue of an iguana puppet.

“Their wedding is one of the best things I’ve ever seen in my life — and I’m 35 and bitter,” Gilchrist says. “It was unique and great and strange and odd and creative and all of the things that they are. And that’s what I love about them so much is that they’re both just so damn good.”

They are good. Funny. Quirky. Kind. They have made each other try new things, venture outside their comfort zone. Since meeting Annie, Damian has become more willing to branch out, more willing to sing, more comfortable on stage. Annie, for her part, has become sillier, more adept in the areas of clowning and pantomiming.

They both seem to understand that what they have, their ability to share such visions with another person, is special. Not long ago, Annie was talking to an out-of-town burlesque acquaintance who mentioned that her husband only tolerates her passion for burlesque, and that he refuses to go to shows because it makes him uncomfortable.

Annie says, “It just really struck me and made me so appreciative that I have a partner that’s so supportive. And that not only is pro-what I do, not only is supportive, but is enthusiastic. We can do those things together.”

Damian says, “I’ve never really experienced that ever before — being able to successfully live and perform and work with a creative partner like that.”

They are unnaturally busy. They bustle back and forth, show to show, event to event, but they seem like there is nothing in the entire world that they’d rather be doing. They do not fight, which is odd but true, according to friends. And they both admit that it is some kind of rare to find someone who so intimately shares the same unusual tastes, who believes so deeply in the same things, whose visions and aspirations so closely mesh, who you can bounce ideas off of no matter what the hour. Like the night not long ago when she woke him up at 1 a.m. to share an idea that involved a turkey.

They’ll perform on Mother’s Day at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in honor of the museum’s World’s Fair exhibit. They’ll make more episodes of “The Nightcap With Arty Vulgaris.” Their first performance was Jan. 13, and the second is later this month. They’ve been kicking around new ideas, and they can’t tell you how nice it is to have a 24/7 sounding board to help sort through them. They are constantly brainstorming and even right now, at 10 p.m. on a weeknight, sitting on the couch and fielding questions about how they met, they are bouncing ideas off each other.

Maybe I should come out as Arty’s male cousin during the next episode of “Nightcap,” she says.

I love it , he says.

In the living room the conversation is winding down and the birds have stopped squawking and the clock is rounding 10. They’re talking about antiques and the collection of musical instruments that they own but have no idea how to play. They’ll learn one day. It is another quirk, another chance to do something together, to learn and connect and create.

A few minutes later they say goodbye and the door closes and the most interesting couple in Kansas City is at home, together, which is exactly where they should be.