Met his wife, Mildred Pam, when she visited the set of a Snakeville comedy he was making at Essanay Studios in Niles, California, in 1914. Her father, Leopold Pam, was a theater manager, whom she was accompanying the day she met Potel. After a whirlwind courtship, Victor and Mildred were married in San Francisco, and on their return to Niles, the entire staff of the Essanay Company greeted them at the station with a donkey cart bearing a sign "To Victor Belong the Spoils.".