Subtract Only Overlapping Portions of Meshes Background

I am trying to model a very simple, two piece necklace. The "plate" is a simple mesh with roughly half of it cut away. The "text" is two letters in cursive. Ideally, the plate and the text are to be combined in a way such that the part of the plate that is filled in will have the first letter cut out of it, and the part of the plate with empty space will have the second letter floating in it. 

Here are the plate and the text, side by side. .

I have been able to use Boolean Operations to extract the difference between these two meshes, satisfying the left hand hand side of the necklace (the cutout part).

However, to see the effects of the cutout, I have to either remove the text or move the text mesh away (thus revealing the cutout but moving the "l" away from its desired position).

Question

Is there a way to perform some kind of difference operation / combination of operations where the "m" would be cutout of the plate while the "l" is left in place?

Thankyou for your time and effort.
I'll let DrRiisTab answer the double boolean method, however I will demonstrate how to do this from the Knife Project method, as it will ultimately get you there, and you will be able to fall back to it, if for some reason the boolean operations don't quite work out for you. As time allows, I will circle back and edit this answer to give you the textual step by steps. Until then you should be able to follow the Screencast Keys with success.







Note: right at the transition, you will have a open mesh, that you may want to close up. I would recommend W >> E(Bridge Edge Loops), see related link if you need help with the nature of Bridge Edgeloops