Hi Curt,
I paddle standing in the bow, in the center healed well over standing in the bilge, and standing on the floor just forward of the aft seat with my calves jammed against the curve of the seat. A standup paddle-board paddle is great for this, sometimes I just grab up an oar. It'd be a hoot to standup paddle a dory tandem!
Really you can paddle from wherever, about the only thing you can do wrong is yell at your wife. The further apart you are the easier it will be to go straight. The closer you are together, and the center of the boat, the faster you'll turn. My wife and I have only paddled canoes tandem, we’ll give the dory a try this week and let you know what we figure.
Good clean stroke technique is more important than seating position. Look up the American Canoe Association (http://www.americancanoe.org/) chapter in your region and take a Quick Start Your Canoe workshop. They'll get you up to speed with proper strokes, especially turning strokes in the stern. Believe it or not, paddling is not intuitive. If it feels right, as a beginner, it's almost certainly very inefficient. Consider putting the stronger person up front. But - check your trim and the stern person should be good at steering. It's easier to learn good stroke technique than change your body makeup. I could give you the long winded reasons but they'll cover that in a good Quick Start.
Seriously, the worst marital fights I've ever seen have been between novice couples. Some epic doozys!

   "The further apart you are the easier it will be to go straight."

Is this, perhaps, marital advice that can be universalized?

Birch, based on observations of Other relationships the inverse seems to be true! ;-p  

   Hmm. I've always thought that the secret to a stable marriage is having two kayaks instead of one canoe. . . . And part of the genius of the NE Dory is that the rowing stations are widely enough separated that any two people can get where they are going without having to row in perfect harmony at all times.

>>Hmm. I've always thought that the secret to a stable marriage is having two kayaks instead of one canoe. . . .

Not to mention letting her have the faster boat.

Laszlo

   Not going with Curt's original intention on this post, here is my experience on the last few comments.  Last summer my wife and I rowed the end of season 5 mile bay challenge. I was estatic that @ 60 years old I completed the row and got third place against competitors 20-30 years younger. My wife called it "absolutely pathetic" because it took us 79 minutes. She was use to doing it in 45 minutes in a surf ski. This year I have a new rowing partner but same wife.

My wife, who used to race outrigger canoes, and I, who taught white water canoeing for years, took the boat out with canoe paddles a few weeks ago. On our initial outing we were surprised that the boat didn’t react at all the way we expected. That prompted a closer look at the dynamics at play. Heeled under sail with board and rudder down you have plenty of directional control. Under oar power is applied symmetrically to make things easy. Paddles are a bit different.

A canoe underway has it’s bow fully engaged with the water and is held by equal pressure on either side. Unlike a canoe, the dory bow doesn’t really get “pinned” like a canoe cutting through water. The flat panel of hull pretty much rides over the water and makes directional stability less positive.
On first look the bottom panel is very canoe shaped but when you compare the actual waterline shape there is pronounced bulge in the center. Plenty of tripping canoes are just as wide but the shape is distributed differently. That bulge at center waterline adds up to a lot of disturbed water under the stern - the eddy resistance end. Also, there is plenty of rocker to the hull, almost as much as a WW boat, so unless there is a lot of weight the skeg isn’t deep enough to engage “clean water”. It’s like the stern is skating around on ball bearings. Makes for a very nimble boat, but one that doesn’t really want to go straight. It was very helpful on a rocky stretch of the Potomac yesterday but a real pain if you want to do straight line stuff.

Because it is not pinned, the NE Dory bow is very responsive to steering strokes like draws and prys. Because the stern is very loose it over responds to every little input. It’s difficult to apply any real power from the stern. One good method to get somewhere in the shallows is to have one person on oars and a person up front with a paddle to make quick adjustments in direction. Going any real distance with paddles alone will be pretty slow.

With both people paddling the strong person goes up front. On, or, if standing, just behind the forward most seat - I’m very certain of this. Making the boat go straight from the bow is pretty easy with only minor adjustments required from the stern. The stern person mostly just steers, that is tries to keep the stern from skating around too much. Position for stern paddler doesn’t mater much at all, third seat or stern sheets are about the same.  I didn’t have a rudder but am pretty sure it would come in handy. If you lock it at neutral you’ll eliminate a lot of stern skating and you can use it as a rudder too! Might be worth the extra drag. We made our trips without mast partner for full access to the bow. Not sure how you’d deal with a mast and partner for any kind of distance paddling.
 
I’ve always been a big fan of standing up in a canoe for the extra visibility, plus the fun factor. It really works well in the bow of dory. A long SUP paddle has great leverage and plenty of reach for steering strokes. The long shaft makes the pry particularly effective, you can really reach under the bow and horse the boat around. If your partner is a strong paddler make sure (s)he times power stroke to yours or you could very easily find yourself head over heels out of the boat. Ahem.

As an aside, I wouldn’t hesitate to take the dory on class II white water if it was deep enough.

Hope this is helpful and not too long winded.
ev