When Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. step onstage, they are exactly where they want to be.

People sometimes ask the singers, who have performed together and been married more than four decades, when they plan to retire. McCoo just laughs and points to musicians such as B.B. King and Tony Bennett, who still are going strong at 86 and 85, respectively.

You only retire when you don’t like what you do, McCoo said.

“When you love what you do, it is not like work. Billy and I have planned on being in music all of our lives. ... We always say as long as there are people out there who want to come and hear what we do, we are going to be out there to give it to them,” said McCoo of Los Angeles.

McCoo and Davis will bring their love of music and entertaining next week to Tarboro. The duo will perform at 8 p.m. Feb. 24 at in Keihin Auditorium at Edgecombe Community College, Cultural Arts Director Eric Greene said.

The husband-and-wife team are best known for being founding members of The 5th Dimension, a pop and soul group popular in the 1960s and ’70s, Greene said. The group’s hits included “Up, Up and Away,” “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” “Wedding Bell Blues” and “Stoned Soul Picnic.”

“This is a very uplifting, positive, feel good type of show. I hope that folks will come in, tap their toes, smile and get up and dance because it is going to be a lot of fun,” Greene said.

The concert will span the couple’s entire musical career, from the early years with The 5th Dimension to their solo careers to their more recent tunes, Davis said. When the audience members get up to leave, they will have experienced the full spectrum of McCoo and Davis’ musical career.

“We are going to give them our hits, the ones we did when we left the group. Also, we go back to our roots and sing some of the songs that we grew up with – blues, jazz, ballads,” Davis said.

McCoo and Davis already had been working on their own music careers when they met in the mid-1960s, she said. She was performing in a jazz band in Los Angeles, and Davis moved to the city from St. Louis to work on his career. They met a few months before The 5th Dimension formed.

The group formed in 1966 but didn’t have its first hit until the members recorded “Go Where You Wanna Go,” which was a flop when sung by The Mamas and the Papas, Davis said. However, it was the release of “Up, Up and Away” that supplied the group with its breakthrough hit.

“Do you remember the song ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy?’ Ours was one of the forerunners to that. When you heard it on the radio, you could be driving, you could be stuck on the freeway in L.A., it didn’t matter. You hit ‘Up, Up and Away’ and you just started feeling good,” McCoo said.

When The 5th Dimension formed, McCoo and Davis were friends for about a year before they started to become involved romantically. They married July 26, 1969, and performed with the group until 1975, when they left to work on other projects.

Through the years, the couple has done joint and solo projects. They attribute the success of their careers and their marriage to their faith, their friendship and their shared commitment to music, Davis said.

In 2004, the couple wrote a book, “Up, Up and Away … How We Found Love, Faith and Marriage in the Entertainment World.” The book shares the duo’s secrets of staying happy and committed to each other in Hollywood. In 2009, to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary, McCoo and Davis released “The Many Faces of Love,” a collection of meaningful love songs from the 1960s and ’70s.

“It is time that people know that there are marriages out there that work. We always hear about the negative things about the divorces and how this happened to this couple. You never hear about the beautiful things that happen in relationships with people who stay together,” Davis said.

Tickets are $40 for adults and $35 for students, staff and seniors. For details, call 823-5166, ext. 187, or go to etix.com.