I would get your KLM booking number from your reservation(they put it on the bottom line in the individual flight record) and go to the airfrance.com sight and then reserve your seats there. THere are computer issues between NWA and KLM and I would not trust what NWA tells you. Also you can just call AirFrance.
I took the advice of mdb and tried to work this out with Air France.... On their site, the seatmap was getting a Java error (on multiple tries from various computers in multiple browsers), so that was a no-go. So, today I called. The agent agreed that there was no row 9 on the plane, and was amazed I was booked into this non-existent place. She put me on hold and after about 10 minutes on hold, she came back. She advised that she'd had to talk to a supervisor, and call some other airlines (assuming NWA and/or KLM) and there is indeed a row 9 on this flight (bulkhead or exit row) and the plane is a 777.
So, for now I'll leave all as-is with my mystery seats! Will do OLCI from Dubai on my way back (think the KLM rule from DXB is 24 instead of 30 hrs ahead) and hope to have some semblance of decent seats together! Thanks all for your help.