Short Version:

Two of us are flying together under separate record locators. Is there any way to "join" or "link" the two so that a change (flight, seat assignments, etc.) made to one applies to the other? AA doesn't seem to think it is possible, but I wanted to ask here.

Long Version:

Back in February I reserved two business-class award flights to Europe. Neither my fellow traveler nor I had sufficient miles for both tickets, but we each had enough for one ticket. I called AA, they simple split the reservation into two RLs, and the tickets were booked each using our own miles. I was assured that the two RLs would be somehow "joined" or "linked" and that AA would know we were together.

Since then, there have been some flight/schedule changes which resulted in non-adjacent seat assignments. Thankfully I caught them, there was sufficient seating available, and we are now together. I called AA and asked if there was some way to automatically seat us adjacent to one another if this happened again. "No," was the answer.

Are we SOL if this happens again or is there some special sequence of words that will get AA to accomplish what I want?

TIA