Accumulating evidence points to cortical oscillations as a mechanism for mediating interactions among functionally specialized neurons in distributed brain circuits. A brain function that may use such interactions is declarative memory. Declarative memory is enabled by circuits in the entorhinal cortex (EC) that interface the hippocampus with the neocortex. During encoding and retrieval of declarative memories, entorhinal and hippocampal circuits are thought to interact via theta and gamma oscillations, which in awake rodents predominate frequency spectra in both regions. In favour of this idea, our lab previously reported theta-gamma coupling observed between EC and hippocampus under steady-state conditions in well-trained rats. However, the relationship between interregional coupling and memory formation remains poorly understood. Using multisite recording at successive stages of associative learning, we found that the coherence of firing patterns in directly-connected entorhinal-hippocampus circuits evolves as rats learn to use an odour cue to guide navigational behaviour, and that such coherence is invariably linked to the development of ensemble representations for unique trial outcomes in each area. Entorhinal-hippocampal coupling was observed specifically in the 20-40 Hz frequency band and specifically between the distal part of hippocampal area CA1 (dCA1) and the lateral part of EC (LEC), the subfields that receive the predominant olfactory input to the hippocampal region. Taken together, the results identify 20-40 Hz oscillations as a mechanism for synchronizing evolving representations in dispersed neural circuits during encoding and retrieval of olfactory-spatial associative memory.