Apache failed to start after SSL config change. No errors. Please help
Solution 1:
Do a full restart, not a graceful one. Your change to have the private key unencrypted should also work.
Conceptually, I can't imagine the apachectl process being able to prompt for a new passphrase for a startup when the main process is only being sent signals by apachectl, not being spawned by it.
In more concrete terms - this 7-year-old posting on a bug report confirms that the behavior that you're seeing is expected - sorry, couldn't find anything more recent confirming that the issue still exists in current apache versions, but it fits.