Just by looking at them, you can tell that they are very, very different foods. Salt is made of tiny grains of pure white, while pepper is a mix of black and white and brown.
More specifically, table salt is the very simple compound NaCl, one of many "salts" in the chemical sense of the term. It dissolves easily, disappearing into solid and liquid food alike with just a little stirring or mixing. On the other hand, the "hot" part of pepper is an organic compound, piperine, but black pepper is ground dried peppercorns, which is why it is much more heterogeneous. It doesn't dissolve at all, and it is very easy to tell exactly how much pepper is in or on any given dish.
So why are these two together, anyway? Certainly they've each been used for a long time. Salt has long been prized for its ability to preserve food, to the extent that "salt roads" in the Bronze Age (think 1000-2000 B.C.) were made specifically to transport salt to deprived regions. In fact, salt is essential for many animals in small quantities, with "saltiness" being a basic human taste.
Pepper, has also been used dating back to 2000 B.C. in India, and was similarly prized and transported for European consumption. Indeed, if it weren't for salt and pepper (as well as other spices), European exploration and colonization would have been much slower, and history very different. Anyway, in France (where else?) pepper officially joined salt as a ubiquitous condiment under the fork of Louis XIV, who considered it better than other spices that overrode the flavor of most dishes.
And they have lived happily together ever since! :)
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