Have you and your friend sign on a guest account using a 2nd controller and sign out the guest account when the countdown hits 1 (Game Starting: 4 3 2 1)
For 3 people. Only 1 person needs to do this.
Or, how I've always done it, was just get my party together (say, three of us) then go to public match, assuming we get a fresh lobby, we all ready up and the game starts up with just us. That obviously isnt full proof but I've never had a random join in during the match countdown or anything.