Pathing of managed DLL without GAC

To date I have been in the position whereby I have always been able to run my C# executables from the same directory in which my dependant managed DLLs are located.  I now need to store my exes in a seperate directory from the DLLs.  Pre .NET my DLLs were located in a dir pathed correctly in Windows, hence the the exes would pick them up ok.  However, now (with .NET exes/dlls) I can only get them to work from the same dir.  As far as I can ascertain, I need to register my DLLs in the GAC.  The only concern I have with this is the manual usage of the SN.exe to create snk file etc. This seems to be a bit OTT just to point to a DLL.
Questions: (1) If I do go down the route of GAC and strong naming, does the SNK file have to be resident on the running system, and if so, where? (2) Whenever a new release of either the exe or dll is required, do I have to recompile both? (3) Is there any other alternative to pointing to the DLL's path string i.e. programatically.