splitting front and animating it so that its splitting horizontally and "opening up" to an image

[annettec77863316]

Hello, I'm hoping to get some help figuring out this little project. I have some text  I would like to split horizontally. In between the text will be this image, sort of like a strikethrough. I want to animate it so that as the text is splitting up/opening up the whole image shows. Any tips would be most appreciated! 

[John Mensinger]

You could produce the graphic assets for that in Illustrator, but you'd have to assemble the animation in another application.