Singular or plural verb with "coupled with"

"Coupled with" does not necessarily have to use "Is". See below

The water strider's hydrophobic legs and undersides, coupled with its small size, are what keep it from drowning

This is a perfectly fine sentence. If you use "coupled with", you use is/are depending on whether what precedes "Coupled with" is singular or plural.

I would avoid 'coupled with' completely here.

• '[A and B], coupled with [C], are two ...' is notionally infelicitous.

Assuming notional agreement (trying to use broad-brush rules is, I consider, inadequate here) either [up-to-date knowledge and experience] (a) is seen as sufficiently unary to be treated as such (ie given singular agreement) or (b) we need to use a non-subsetted list 'A, plus B, plus C'. Thus

• (a) Health and safety, coupled with economic growth, is our primary focus.

I've chosen a different example of the same structure because I can't bring myself to see 'up-to-date knowledge' and 'experience' as being sufficiently cohesive to warrant being treated as unary. Beans and luncheon meat, not bacon and eggs.

(There are, though, not a few examples on the internet which treat 'A coupled with B' as a compound subject; this is not the received viewpoint. The following from an [otherwise?] well-written article from ACS: Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering:

• (anti-a) Efficient antibacterial activity coupled with the ability to visualize bacterial processes allow Au–Ag NPs to be a potential solution in medicine and biosensing.)

............... or

• (b) Up-to-date knowledge, experience, and the motivation of young people, are assets that make their advice more pivotal.

You can show that the A and B are more cohesive than A and C, say, without being unary, by rephrasing

• (b') Up-to-date knowledge and experience – when put together with the motivation of young people – are assets that make their advice more pivotal.