Jeffjarvis,
Tubes for a newbie? I think that might be going overboard, we do not know if the guy will eventually become an audiophile, he is 50 already, the likelyhood of him seriously getting into hifi is very small. Anyway, what you suggested is, I am sure a great match and both highly regarded components.
We prefer solid states to bottles, don't forget bottles require additional warm up times to sound good.