Merge field not populating in Email Template

It is a weird issue, but it got fixed when I cloned the email template and used it in the workflow's email alert instead of the old email template. This seems to be a bug, as the new email template is an exact replica of the old one (didn't even copy paste, it was just cloned).

I faced this crazy issue when I copy+pasted the merge field from one environment sb to another. It got fixed when i copied the field from the 'Copy Merge Field Value' text box from the 'Available Merge Fields' in the Email template, sounds like a crazy solution, but it worked for me!