CSS background image URL setting not working for table cell in Safari and Chrome

I was scratching my head over this one. The inline style was specified as

style="background-image:url('image_link.jpg');

and it was working in all browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera EXCEPT safari and chrome. After some trial and error, i found that this was due to the fact that my table cell (TD) was not having any contents. I inserted an non-breaking space and Voila! It works now.