A tabloid is giving Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony an early and unwelcome anniversary gift by claiming their not quite three-year-old union is on the brink of implosion, an allegation they've quickly moved to quell.

"J. Lo & Marc Split!" screams the cover of this week's OK! Magazine, a story Lopez's rep rails to the New York Daily News is "disgusting" and "full of lies."

Warns the flack, "We're consulting lawyers."

So what has Mr. and Mrs. Anthony so upset? Seems OK! is convinced the cadaverous crooner, 38, who gazed upon his more shapely spouse, 37, on Oscar night and declared himself "the luckiest man in the world," is "suffocating" her with his "controlling" ways.

"He expects his women to behave in a certain way, to stay home, to run the house while the husband is in charge," an Anthony "friend" relays to the mag.

Lopez and Anthony, who have three failed marriages between them (two for her, one for him), have had several bitter blowouts in recent months, maintains OK!, from a "huge argument" last summer to a spat just before New Year's, which purportedly prompted J. Lo to wing to Miami and ring in 2007 on her own.

"Marc expected Jennifer to follow him back to New York and beg for forgiveness, but she didn't," an insider tells the magazine, with still another source sniping, "Marc is very machismo. Marc won't let her even do a photo shoot by herself. He is always there watching, waiting."

Other charges leveled by the magazine include an incident at a post-Golden Globes bash, when "Marc [dragged] Jennifer away after spotting her dancing with another man," and his supposed insistence "that Jennifer sell her beloved Miami home and the Los Angeles house where they wed [in June 2004]."

But the breakup talk seems to be news to Lopez and Anthony, who were not only side-by-side two weeks ago at her record-signing in the Bronx and after her appearance on MTV's "TRL" but were also joined at hip-to-bony-hip in Los Angeles a couple of days back when J. Lo promoted her new Spanish-language album with a guest spot on "American Idol."

"They're inseparable," an "actual friend of the couple" insists to the Daily News. "I don't get a whiff of trouble."

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